 Rich Battista |
Time Inc. today reported a nine percent drop in Q3 revenues to $679M due to an 18 percent decline in advertising sales.
CEO Rich Battista highlighted Time’s growth in digital/brand extensions revenues that are expected to hit the $1B mark this year.
For the first time, the publisher provided quarterly breakout figures for magazine, digital and brand extension segments.
The magazine group dipped 14 percent to $433M, while digital advanced three percent to $165M and brand extensions slipped four percent to $83M.
Battista noted that the publisher’s “strategic transformation program” officially launched during Q3, a program designed to optimize revenues opportunities and shave more than $400M from the company’s cost structure.
“Our new management team remains focused on executing effectively against our growth strategy to sustain the strength of our print products, increase our growing digital revenues and extend our brands through high-margin, high-value offerings,” said Battista in a statement.
Focusing on Time’s 139M monthly unique visitors, Battista said the company “is committed to leveraging our massive scale and powerful brand portfolio to serve our consumers anywhere.”
Underscore Media, a new creator-led media venture dedicated to New York sports, is built around three established New York sports personalities, Sal Licata, Jimmy Traina, and John Jastremski.
McClatchy, which owns 29 daily papers across 14 states (including The Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star), launches a wave of layoffs that extends to at least 13 of those papers... The Toledo Blade, which was founded in 1835, is set to shut down on Dec. 31, unless owner Block Communications manages to find a buyer for it... A bill awaiting approval by California governor Gavin Newsom would give local newsrooms a boost. 
Fox News Media issued a pretty sparse release to announce the departure of one of its stars. “Effective today, Maria Bartiromo is no longer with FOX News Media,” it reads.
Brunswick Group partner John Simons has joined CNN as senior director of business & media. He held top jobs at Time and the Wall Street Journal.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
